Who founded DuckDuckGo?
The search engine was launched on February 29, 2008, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and was founded by Gabriel Weinberg.
Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur who previously founded the now-defunct social network Names Database.
Up until 2011, Weinberg self-funded the project, which was subsequently “supported by Union Square Ventures and a handful of individual investors.”
Weinberg described the name’s origins in terms of the children’s game duck, duck, goose. “Really it just popped in my head one day and I just liked it. It is certainly influenced/derived from duck duck goose, but other than that there is no relation, e.g., a metaphor.”
How is DuckDuckGo different from Google?
In contrast to other large internet firms like Google and Facebook, which have typically generated money by targeting advertising based on your browsing history and personal data, DuckDuckGo takes the opposite strategy.
While Google has said that it would no longer do so, the platform still gathers a lot of information about its users, including location and search history — even while using Incognito Mode.
Incognito Mode removes all traces of your browsing experience from your computer, including cookies, history, any data input into fields.
Even when using Incognito Mode, Google can remember your searches, and corporations, internet service providers, and governments can still monitor you throughout the internet.
DuckDuckGo is unique in that it does not save any of your browsing data and prevents trackers as you browse.
DuckDuckGo have recently rolled out multiple updates
The search engine announced yesterday on social media that they have recently rolled out multiple updates.
The company recently launched Privacy Pro! as well as multiple other updates.
It is not known if these updates are related to the current outage.
What issues are users reporting?
According to DownDetector, DuckDuckGo users are unable to use the search engine.
Taking to X, one user said: “All the search engines seem to be down?”
What is DuckDuckGo?
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that prioritizes privacy.
It does not provide tailored search results, unlike Google, making it more difficult to become trapped in an information echo chamber.
It does not profile its users based on their search habits, and all users receive the same search results.
DuckDuckGo, like Google or Bing, is primarily an online search engine, but it also offers its own applications and extensions for all major operating systems and browsers.